Abstract
This chapter considers whether the ways in which the respondents in this study imagined the societal future had any overlap with popular theoretical accounts of the contemporary era (and by extension, its future horizon). Rather than simply comparing the respondents’ imaginings of the future to these macro accounts, the future imaginaries that were identified in the previous chapter are considered alongside these accounts with the aim of comparing units of similar generality. Although the imaginary premised on a narrative of societal decline and eventual crisis aligns with some of the main tenets of these accounts, the second, hope-infused imaginary does not appear to be compatible with their claims. This chapter therefore proposes an alternative way of interpreting the contemporary future.
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Cook, J. (2018). Future Imaginaries in Theory and Practice. In: Imagined Futures. Critical Studies in Risk and Uncertainty. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65325-9_5
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